11.29.2010.2

It is ten forty-five pm, and the neon signs illuminating the Safeway parking lot wait anxiously on the threshold between “open” and “closed.” Their quivering light skips over curbsides and cars to reach the street, where it meets a harshly glowing left-hand turn signal and waits, breathless, for a chance to turn green.

In the first car, the man in the Armani jacket adjusts his Bluetooth headset and feels the pulse in his palm beating in time with the email notifications on his Blackberry. In the second car, the boy with the bruised knuckles reaches into the passenger seat for a beer and then stops, looks at the can of Diet Coke already in his hand, and contemplates his cluttered cup holders. And in the third car, the ponytailed girl watches the light as she carefully, carefully lifts her left foot from the clutch and extends a leg swathed in pink pajama pants until her battered plastic sandal rests against the floor of the cab.

The man in the Armani jacket tries to decide which meeting to attend at nine-fifteen tomorrow. The boy with the bruised knuckles wonders why the Coke feels so cold. The ponytailed girl bargains with herself for a quart of ice cream and plans a strategy for moving her foot back onto the clutch. The neon signs resign themselves to another ten minutes of positive messaging. The signal changes.

A wide, graceful u-turn, and the BMW aligns itself in the opposite outside lane. The man in the Armani jacket smugly selects his meeting. To his left, the dusty Volvo shrieks its resentment and pulls level on the inside, wretched and volatile in empty victory. The boy with the bruised knuckles contracts his face in pain and crumples the Coke can to match. The signal turns yellow.

And in the stripped-down stick-shift pickup, with the neon signs sparkling against its champagne paint job, the ponytailed girl leans like a puppy out the driver’s side window and stares. She stares as her memories of glass and metal angels streak out of their azure summer sky and vanish into the night, borne on the emptiness between rubber and asphalt. She stares until she begins to laugh, until she misses the signal, until tears of wonder dot her pink pajama pants, until finally she screams “That was amazing!” and imagines that somehow the beautiful strangers in their tinted-window worlds will share in her unkempt joy.

The stoplight turns red and green and yellow and red again. The ponytailed girl emerges from the Safeway with a gallon of Mocha Almond Fudge. The boy with the bruised knuckles sighs and reaches under the seat for another silver can. The man in the Armani jacket arrives home and fixes himself a cup of coffee.

The neon signs sparkle, and squirm, and proclaim the hour in a single harsh burst as they triumphantly transform.